1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to storing data. Still more particularly, the present invention is directed to a computer implemented method and computer usable program product for embedding rich content within images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, many applications use a custom or proprietary document format to represent their data. For example, Microsoft Word™ uses the extension “.doc” to identify documents in Word format. Adobe Acrobat™ uses the extension “.pdf.” to identify documents in portable document format (PDF). IBM Lotus Forms™ uses the “.xdfl.” extension to identify documents in Lotus Forms. These formats require the application corresponding to the document format to be present on the user's data processing system in order to view and manipulate the content stored in that format.
In other words, to edit a document in a custom document format or a proprietary document format, a compatible version of the application associated with the custom or proprietary document format is needed on the computing device to open, view, and edit the document. If the corresponding application is not present or available to the computing device, the operating system often times provides an error message indicating that the document cannot be opened or viewed by the user. This error message generally provides no clues as to which application software or application version is required to open the document.
The user may attempt to install the corresponding application on the user's computer. However, not all operating systems provide an automatic discovery mechanism to identify the application format of a particular document. Therefore, there may be no easy way for a user to determine which application should be installed in order to display the document. In addition, even if the user discovers which application is necessary through trial and error, the user must still locate, purchase, install, and/or upgrade the corresponding application software on the computing device in order to view and/or manipulate the content of the document. This may be a time consuming, expensive, and burdensome process.
Additionally, installing the software requires sufficient memory being available to store and run the corresponding application software. This may require the user to delete other data stored in memory or purchase additional memory. In addition, the user may not even have a valid operating system that is compatible with the corresponding application that is needed, because most software is only supported on a small set of operating systems. For example, the user may have a Linux® operating system that is not compatible with a Windows® application that is needed to view the document.
In another solution, a static image of the document may be available for viewing. Images, generally, have a longer lifespan than documents, because the applications that open images do not tend to be as difficult to locate and do not require as many upgrades as most applications, such as word processing applications.
However, images cannot be manipulated or edited. Instead, the image can only be viewed using an image viewer application. Thus, the document because less functional and less transferable as the document becomes older and the corresponding application becomes more unavailable, even though the document may still be a very useful and important reference to a user. This problem may be particularly pronounced in data archiving, in which documents may be stored for longer periods of time. When the user retrieves the archived document, there is no clear answer as to whether the document will be useful in the archived document format, because the corresponding application and/or corresponding application version may no longer be available. Thus, the user may not be able to open the archived document on the user's computer to manipulate and/or edit the document.